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Facebook is adding security and privacy protections to Messenger. That’s like Ghislaine Maxwell taking first aid classes so she can be a better babysitter for your teen-age girls.

We ordered a new couch which was supposed to arrive today but which seems to have disappeared in transit. I am haunted by the vision of it being sat on by people with poor personal hygiene who are eating Cheetos and wiping their fingers on the upholstery.

America can become the country claims to be, starting by telling the truth about its history of slavery, genocide and oppression. “Until we tell the truth we deny ourselves the opportunity for beauty.”

The Ezra Klein Show: Bryan Stevenson on how America can heal

Tucker Carlson, the most popular host in the history of cable news, returned from a week-long vacation after his head writer was exposed as a raging bigot. The scandal won’t stick.

Financially, it will cost some advertisers but Fox gets most of its revenue from subscribers, who love this kind of controversy.

Tucker Carlson’s America

I walked a different route than I usually do today, and saw several noteworthy vehicles. Two were classics, all had character. 📷

Lush photo essay from the golden age of shopping malls.

Cruising the Past & Future of the Retro Shopping Mall

I loved to go to the mall in my 20s. I’d go alone, during the day, get a fast food lunch, see what was new on the science fiction shelves at B. Dalton and Waldenbooks — anything by Asimov, Heinlein, Niven or Zelazny? A new Robert B. Parker? In that era before the mainstream internet and before I got plugged into science fiction fandom, the only way to find out if a favorite author had a new book out was to check in stores.

Then I’d catch a movie matinee. I’d find a spot directly under a light in the theater and read from one of my new books until the movie started.

That was a good afternoon.

From my journal two years ago: My Apple Watch alarm went off while I was watching the dishes, and without thinking about it I tapped the watch face with my nose to switch the alarm off. I believe I have hit on a breakthrough in nasal user interface design.

I was feeling down and blue so I spent a lot of time on social media and now I feel ever so much better and more cheerful, said nobody never.

📚I finished reading “Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic," by Tom “insert Spider-Man Joke Here” Holland. It’s a history of the rise to power of Julius Caesar and then a quick overview of the reign of Augustus. It’s one of the most readable histories I’ve read, very novelistic, which is not surprising, because Holland got his start as a novelist.

The Romans had a republic that lasted 500 years and was quickly replaced by a monarchy. That’s something that’s been on my mind based on the news of the past few years.

Next, I think I’ll read Holland’s follow-up: “Dynasty,” which covers the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.

But first I’ll finish reading “The Annihilation Score,” a novel by Charles Stross, in his Laundry series.

Man, It’s Boss! Monogram’s Red Baron model kit, the Groovy Custom Show Rod Now at Your Favorite Store! (1968) via

I am continuing to fiddle with handwriting recognition (aka Scribble) on the iPad. I’m getting better at it but I don’t know if it will ever replace the onscreen keyboard.

I read multiple reviews that say Scribble is amazing even with the reviewers' awful handwriting. My awful handwriting is Scribble’s Waterloo.

David Gerrold’s 1983 novel “A Matter for Men” features the Earth facing a biological menace which many people believe is a hoax, and the US in decline but still powerful and threatening.

Oh, that old-time science fiction! So unrealistic!

Very Hungry Caterpillar

On Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic: Hospitals are using homebrew dongles with code from a Polish hacker to repair ventilators, getting around thieving licensing by manufacturer Medtronic. Datamir helps cops spy on protesters with Twitter. How arms dealers make billions on police militarization. local California businesses used clamshells as currency during the Depression. And France’s Macron demands a national database of porn preferences

For me, texting is a full-duplex conversation. I think possibly most people think of texting as half-duplex, like speech, and consider my approach rude.

“Ghislaine, Is That You?”: Inside Ghislaine Maxwell’s Life on the Lam

I did not know this: Ghislaine Maxwell is the daughter of the late media mogul Robert Maxwell, briefly famous as a rival to Rupert Murdoch. Robert Maxwell’s body was found floating near his yacht in 1991.

Maybe his death was an accident. Maybe it was suicide. Maybe he was murdered to cover up … something.

The yacht was named the Lady Ghislaine, for his daughter.

The elder Maxwell and Richard Epstein had a lot in common. They were both parvenus who bought their way into high society and respectability, and who fell to disgrace.

Ghislaine Maxwell idolized both men.

Mark Seal reports at Vanity Fair:

To Ghislaine, her mother, three brothers, and three sisters, Robert Maxwell was Samson, tearing down the gates of Gaza, as he was depicted in a stained-glass window in their 51-room Oxford mansion: a titan of luck, impossible achievement, and unlimited wealth. “If Bob Maxwell didn’t exist, no one could invent him,” Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock would say. Born Jan Ludvik Hoch into a Hasidic family in a tiny village in Czechoslovakia, he was so poor that he and his six siblings had to wear shoes in shifts. He evolved into a warrior, surviving the Holocaust, in which 300 of his immediate and extended family members perished, to join the Czech resistance. When his country fell to the Nazis, he fled to France and joined the British Army, fighting in bloody battles from Normandy to Germany. After the war, he married the daughter of a prosperous British silk merchant, christened himself Robert Maxwell, and bought Pergamon Press, a publisher of scientific journals. It became the anchor of an empire that would, at the time of his death, include hundreds of companies, among them the publishing giant Macmillan and newspapers from The Mirror in London to the New York Daily News. As big as or maybe even big-ger than his rival, Rupert Murdoch, Maxwell was a bombastic, demanding patriarch who dined with kings and presidents and exhibited a bottomless appetite for family, food, fortune, and fame.

Now he was dead, and it wasn’t long before the mighty house of Maxwell was exposed as a house of cards. Maxwell, it turned out, had pledged millions from his company’s pension funds to shore up his tottering empire, exposing his 32,000 employees to retirement ruin and racking up debts of nearly $5 billion. The conspiracy theories multiplied: He committed suicide rather than face his financial crimes; he died aboard his yacht while engaged in sex with a mistress; he fell overboard during his regular postmidnight piss over the railings; he was murdered by British security agents panicked that he had taken possession of tapes that could incriminate the MI6 intelligence service in crime and espionage; he was injected with a poisonous syringe by frogmen sent by his Mossad spymasters to silence him from revealing their secret arms deals.

Bill Murray dances with Gilda Radner at Studio 54. via

In the 70s, overalls and high heels were considered perfectly acceptable ladies' wear for a night on the town. The 70s were a very strange decade.

Gilda’s rocking it. She looks fantastic.

I like writing things by hand … in theory.

I like the idea of being the guy who carries around a notebook, like Indiana Jones’s father, and writes down all my brilliant thoughts. In my mind, it’s a simple but beautiful notebook, and I write in it using a fountain pen.

In reality, I type everything on my MacBook and if I’m not at my MacBook I use my phone. On the phone, I’m using voice transcription more and more.

Al Pacino with his parents, Salvatore and Rose, in 1940. via

He’s just a few months old and he already looks like Al Pacino.

I often see this bus parked around the corner. I keep expecting 11-year old Danny Bonaduce to emerge. 📷

I installed the new iPad beta and I think I like the scribbling feature it takes getting Used to. I don’t handwrite anything anymore

3 Mac apps I'm not using anymore

I configured a new MacBook Pro a month ago. Usually I use Migration Assistant for that kind of thing but this time I started from scratch and moved data and apps over manually.

Three apps that still haven’t made the transition.

  • Alfred
  • Keyboard Maestro
  • TextExpander

All three are apps I previously used daily and would have sworn were essential to my workflow. Apparently not.

I do have an idea for a thing I want to do with Keyboard Maestro – set up a series of palettes to remind me of keyboard shortcuts. But I’m in no rush on that.

The Militarization Of Police: Journalist Radley Balko, author of ‘Rise Of The Warrior Cop,’ says police departments across America are increasingly using equipment designed for use on a battlefield, including tanks, bayonets and grenades, and using them against peaceful protestors.

How to Buy Tech That Lasts and Lasts

Brian X. Chen at the New York Times:

When we buy a gadget these days, we rarely assume that it will endure.

We expect to play a video game console only for as long as companies make games for it. We expect to use a smartphone or a laptop for just as long as the battery has juice or until it can no longer run important software.

At some point, we feel that we must upgrade. We must have the latest and greatest camera. We must have apps that run faster. We must have brighter screens.

Here’s the thing: This is all the doing of marketing professionals, seared into our subconscious. The reality is that consumer electronics, such as your phone, computer or tablet, can last for many years. It just takes some research to obtain tech that will endure. This exercise will be increasingly important in a pandemic-induced recession, which has forced many of us to tighten our spending.

“It’s a matter of buying what you need, not what the company is telling you that you need…. ”

Look for tech that’s easy to repair, particularly replacing the battery. And consider spending more to get the best.

I got the new Facebook layout yesterday evening. That’s late – many people were getting it months ago, weren’t they?

I like it. It reminds me of Google+.

I like the new notifications layout.

I’ve lost the ability to format text in posts, which I had for a couple of months. No big deal.

But the Facebook News Feed is still a cluttered mess and inconvenient to use. And the News Feed is the only part of Facebook that interests me.

I want to be able to get notifications for comments separately from likes and reactions.

Also, I want to be able to create lists of friends, groups and pages where I see EVERY post made by members of that list, sorted reverse-chronologically by the time of the post.

Neither of these things is possible.

I’m not a Boomer. I’m Generation Jones

Generation Jones is the younger cohort of boomers. We are a separate generation, raised in the recession of the 70s in very early 80s, rather than the prosperous decades following World War II.

We have a different attitude and different pop-culture icons than our older peers.

Jeffrey I Williams writes at the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2014:

Generation Jones is an actual thing. It refers to the second half of the baby boom, to a group of people born roughly from 1954 to 1965.

We might be grouped with the baby boomers, but our formative experiences were profoundly different. If the zeitgeist of the boomers was optimism and revolution, the vibe of Gen Jones was cynicism and disappointment. Our formative years came in the wake of the 1973 oil shock, Watergate, the malaise of the Carter years and the Reagan recession of 1982. Above all, we resented the older boomers themselves — who we were convinced had things so much easier, and in whose shadow we’d been forced to spend our entire lives.

The fact that most people have never even heard of Generation Jones is the most Generation Jones thing about Generation Jones.

Not My Generation www.chronicle.com/article/G…

Also, from Jennifer Finney Boylan, at the New York Times last month:

Donald Trump (who is, it should be noted, an older boomer) has been a fraud on so many levels, but if there’s anything authentic about him, it’s his air of grievance. It may have been this, Mr. Pontell says, that made Jonesers vote for him in 2016. Hillary Clinton, to them, was the epitome of older baby boomer entitlement, and if Mr. Trump stood for anything, it was for the very things Gen Jones most identifies with: jealousy, resentment, self-pity.

There’s a word in Ireland, “begrudgery.” Padraig O’Morain, writing in The Irish Times, says: “Behind a lot of this begrudgery lies the unexamined and unspoken assumption that there is only so much happiness to go around. And guess what? The others have too much and I have too little.”

Mr. Jones and Me: Younger Baby Boomers Swing Left www.nytimes.com/2020/06/2…

Julie got a new handbag. Sammy says, “Mine now!” 📷

We watched Hamilton last night and 1776 tonight. That’s five hours and 25 minutes of movies. My butt has declared independence.

My reaction immediately before watching “Hamilton:” “Nearly three hours? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

After one hour: “I sort of like it.”

After watching the whole thing: “I liked it, but did not love it.”

This afternoon I listened to the soundtrack. I guess I love it.

The 1776 drinking game: Take a drink — of rum — every time John Adams says “Good God!” or “Incredible!”

The first movie I saw in a theater

A friend asked her Facebook friends what was the first movie that they remembered seeing in a theater.

I dug through the IMDB to find some of the earliest movies I remember seeing in theaters and enjoying. They include Doctor Doolittle, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the Love Bug and the Jungle Book. They came out in 1967-68.

Also at about that time I remember a movie with Sammy Davis Jr. — I probably had no idea who he was when I first saw the movie, but I recognized him later, in memory. For most of my life I remembered one or two scenes of that movie and how much I enjoyed it but I couldn’t remember the name of the movie or what it as about.

I remembered Sammy was in a castle and that the movie was a comedy. I remembered one scene where he was shouting out a window. Not a lot to go on, but enough for Google:

“Salt and Pepper.” It’s from 1968 and also stars Peter Lawford.

The “Salt and Pepper” movie poster. It’s groovy.

After discovering the body of a murdered female agent in their trendy Soho, London nightclub, groovy owners Charles Salt and Christopher Pepper partake in a fumbling investigation and uncover an evil plot to overthrow the government. Can our cool, yet inept duo stop the bad guys in time?

Here’s the trailer on YouTube:

Sammy Davis Jr. plays Salt and Peter Lawford plays Pepper. Get it?

It’s not a children’s movie, but I expect my Mom wanted to see it and so she dragged my Dad and me and my brothers. I remember my parents hated it and my brothers were too young to get it, but I loved it. I thought Sammy and Peter Lawford were cool. Which they absolutely were, but the movie looks like a turkey.

📓📽

‪I like that the instructions for Hot Pockets say I should “prep” it first. Like sticking a thing in a cardboard sleeve makes me a chef. ‬

Minnie supervises my second Covid haircut, by Julie, who did an excellent job. 📷

I’ve had to teach myself how to read books again. When I was a kid and into my 20s I read books voraciously, but beginning in my 40s I transitioned to a diet of articles and status updates consumed on the Internet.

Listening to a recent Ezra Klein podcast yesterday, he talked about the need to spend an hour or more of uninterrupted reading – get into a deep reading state, to truly absorb information and make connections. I suppose I did that yesterday, got in a good hour of reading. But I switched between two books — a history and a science fiction novel. Does that count?

For most of my life, I’ve followed Theodore Roosevelt’s reading style. He read voraciously and widely, and just kept books with him at all times and read when he could, even if it was just for a minute. People who worked with him at the White House said that if he even had a minute or two between meetings in the Oval Office, he’d pull out a book and read for whatever seconds or minutes he had available.

When I was a kid, I read sitting on the couch when my family was around me watching TV. I can’t do that anymore. If the TV is on, it pulls me in.

I wish Trump put as much energy into protecting live Americans as he does for dead Confederates and Vladimir Putin.

The Decline of the American World

Other countries are used to loathing America, admiring America, and fearing America (sometimes all at once). But pitying America? That one is new.

Tom McTague looks at the US from Britain, with a view that’s harsh, but ultimately loving and optimistic.

That’s how I feel about the US these days as well.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I’ve been reading ancient history recently, and that tells me the US is still a very young country. I believe our best days are ahead of us. But we’re in a dark time now – maybe the darkest since the Civil War – and the worst may still be to come.

Milton Glaser, Co-founder of New York Magazine and Creator of ‘I❤NY,’ Dies at 91

Christopher Bonanos at New York Magazine:

He wrote, too. Starting in our first issues, Glaser and his friend Jerome Snyder, the design director of Sports Illustrated, created “The Underground Gourmet,” becoming very possibly the world’s first columnists covering cheap ethnic restaurants in a sophisticated way. That sounds like no big deal now, but it was a minor revolution in 1968. As Glaser himself would explain when asked, nobody back then bothered to cover restaurants outside the white-tablecloth world, because they didn’t advertise. But as hardcore New Yorkers, Glaser and Snyder knew that a whole lot of us love nothing more than a great Chinatown dumpling joint, or a superior taco stand, or a scoop of perfect whitefish salad, or a bowl of udon. He brought all of those and more to New York’s early readership, and everyone — from the Times on down — soon started doing the same. …

In the mid-1980s, Steve Hindy and Tom Potter, the founders of a new microbrewery, came to him for a logo design. Glaser took a look at their proposed name — Brooklyn Eagle, recalling the defunct newspaper — and, as he told the story, he offered one key bit of advice. “Anheuser-Busch already has the eagle,” he told them. “You’ve got Brooklyn. That’s enough!” Brooklyn Brewery, with its swoop-y baseball-jersey logo evoking both the departed Dodgers and a swirl of beer foam, made its debut in 1988. Because it was a start-up without much money, Glaser took a stake in the company instead of a fee. Today, Brooklyn Brewery is a huge global brand — and, as Glaser told me a couple of years ago, that was the thing that made him financially independent, enough to keep him in taxicabs and then some, enthusiastically sketching, for the rest of his life.

Milton Glaser, New York and ‘I❤NY’ Designer, Dies at 91

"You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument"

Caroline Randall Williams says that as a light-skinned Black woman, her body is a monument to the Confederate legacy.

I am a black, Southern woman, and of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow.

According to the rule of hypodescent (the social and legal practice of assigning a genetically mixed-race person to the race with less social power) I am the daughter of two black people, the granddaughter of four black people, the great-granddaughter of eight black people. Go back one more generation and it gets less straightforward, and more sinister. As far as family history has always told, and as modern DNA testing has allowed me to confirm, I am the descendant of black women who were domestic servants and white men who raped their help.

You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument

Remastered silent movies from the 1890s look breathtakingly real and contemporary, like the people could just walk out of the frame. youtu.be/jN2E3s6Pk…

Matt Loughrey uses machine learning to add additional frames to smooth the motion. The films include Broadway in New York, in 1896, and “Buffalo” Bill Cody having a conversation with an Oglala Lakota leader.

African safari journal – one year ago – we visit a tribal village

June 21, 2019 - Yesterday was busy even by the standards of this trip. Up at 6 and out at 6:30 to the main tent for breakfast and coffee. The coffee is not bad here; it’s not great, but drinkable black.

I chatted with Jordanna, an Asian woman with a posh English accent. I asked where she is from; she said London. If she had said Singapore, I would not have been surprised – Crazy Rich Asians. [Note from 2020: I had just seen the movie a few weeks earlier on the plane over. Only a year later and that pop culture reference seems hopelessly dated.]

=-=-=-

Later at breakfast yesterday we had a conversation with Ross and Agnes, a couple from Atlanta. We talked about the difficulties of bad WiFi – how bad WiFi is worse than no WiFi, because with no WiFi at least you know you have no WiFi, but with bad WiFi you’re endlessly pulling to refresh. [Note from 2020: The Oatmeal did a comic on just this very subject: <theoatmeal.com/comics/no…>]

I was so used to meeting non-Americans – Namibians and Botswanans in particular – that when they asked where we are from, I reflexively nearly said, “The United States. California. San Diego,” which is now my stock answer I told them that and they laughed and said that when telling non-Americans where they are from, they say, “Atlanta. It’s a big city in Georgia. Which is next to Florida.” People around the world have heard of Florida.

Festus, our outstanding guide, took us out for a game drive in the morning, and the highlight of that was finding lions feeding on a zebra. I found it fascinating, but neither thrilling nor disgusting. It was nature.

But the highlight of the day was a visit to a Himba tribal village, a family of about ten people living as their ancestors have probably done for tens of thousands of years. We drove about two hours through the hot desert, flat and khaki colored and featureless like much of it is here in Africa, with the occasional hardy plant. We went through canyons and saw zebras galloping at full speed, despite the heat. That’s how zebras move by default – always at a gallop, Festus told us. The male zebra brings up the rear of his harem. We saw ostriches too.

The village comprises two large rectangular kraals, totaling an acre I guess, made of the same rough vertical wood branches that are standard for those sorts of structures. One is for goats – we saw a few wandering around – and the other is for cattle. That’s mainly what the Himba live on, their diet consists of a great deal of protein, Festus told us later.

There were ten people in the tribe, a man, his wives, a few toddlers and very young children, and a younger man who looked to be about 15 or 16. They were nearly naked, the women with their breasts uncovered. The primary man, who we interacted with mainly, wore leather sandals like flip-flops, a short skirt or kilt made of a blue fabric in front that appeared to be manufactured, appendages that looked like fur animal tails in the rear, a handmade necklace that seemed to be made of leather and maybe bone or wood, and nothing else that I can recall. He and all the people were lean but appeared well-fed and healthy. The younger man wore a T-shirt advertising a brand of beer, in English, that I did not recognize.

Festus said ahead of time that he would introduce us to each person, and encouraged us to use the tribal word for hello – “morro” - accompanied by a firm handshake. We did that, greeting the men and women. I added, “I am very pleased to meet you,” knowing my words would not be understood but hoping my voice would.

The people lived in a few small huts, about as tall as me and maybe wide enough to lie down. [Note from 2020, for those who don’t know me personally – I’m about 5'9"-5'10" – average height for an American man.] The huts are conical, made of dung mixed with mud. There were a couple of smaller hut-like structures on raised platforms about knee or waist height, used for storage. There were two small campfires, one of them with religious significance where the man told us he went to pray each morning.

We talked a bit, translated by Festus, because none of these people spoke English. I addressed my questions and statements to the man directly, occasionally looking to Festus, as I have seen people do when dealing with translators in TV and movies. I don’t have much experience with that myself.

I asked the man what message he would like the rest of the world to know about his people. He was stumped by that, and called to the women for help. Later, Festus told us they have a matriarchal culture – despite being polygamous – and women are very well respected. He asked me in return what I wanted. I said long healthy life and not to get in trouble with my wife. We all laughed at that.

Then he invited us to take a look around and said we were welcome to take pictures.

By that point I was ready to go because it seemed to me that these people’s lives were awful. Living in the hot desert with barely any shelter or clothing, squatting on the ground, eating goats and cattle, in a community of less than a dozen people. But we did not want to be rude, so we looked around a bit and I took a few photos.

They had a large table set up with crafts, many of which they’d made locally, some of which they’d bought, inexpensive giraffe and hippo figurines and jewelry. Some of it was made from PVC pipe. I had previously planned to buy a bracelet and be able to tell people casually I bought it in a Himba village, a primitive tribe in Namibia, but that seemed disrespectful now and none of the items appealed to me or were even in my size.

=-=-=-

But we bought a few things because that was the arrangement. Festus has told us we were expected to bargain, and so we did although it seemed petty to bargain the equivalent of a US dollar or two from people who had so little.

In the first part of the ride back to the camp I was troubled by what I had seen. I’ve grown up seeing images of people who live like the Himba, but to see it in real life was moving. The Himba have less than the homeless in any US city or the people who live in the shantytowns we passed at Windhoek.

I was torn, I told a Festus. On the one hand, I said, I think people have a right to life how they want to live. On the other hand: Not like that.

Festus was silent then and I asked him to tell me if he thought I was wrong. He said no, he agreed with me.

At one point on the drive back to camp we passed a single broken beer bottle on the desert floor. It was the only trash we had seen. Festus stopped the Toyota and hopped out. He crouched down next to the debris and examined it momentarily without touching it, then carefully plucked the pieces one at a time with one hand and deposited them gently in his other hand. I thought it would be good to get out and help but I was enervated by the heat and the scene I’d seen at the Himba village, so I watched.

We drove on mostly quiet on the way back to camp, over a sea of sand, as it got dark out.

Later in conversations with Festus and other Africans, I learned that the quandary I faced in thinking about the Himba is reflected in African policy. The African nations have ceded large tracts of land to the Himba and the Himba get revenue from rent on that land. The camp we are staying at is on land leased from the Himba.

In conversations with Africans later I learned a couple of things about the Himba that made me think differently about their lives. They have a rich matriarchal society and tradition. Social ties are as important to human beings as physical needs. And close social ties are something we Americans lack, leading to epidemic in suicides and to drug addiction, which is a kind of slow suicide. Would it be ridiculous to suggest that Americans are as impoverished as the Himba? [Note from 2020: An exaggeration but not ridiculous.]

Also, the Himba enjoy complete freedom of movement. They can at any moment pack up all their belongings on their back and go elsewhere.

I think it was the same evening that Festus gave a brief astronomy presentation, showing us major features of the night sky using a laser pointer that shot out a solid beam, similar to the one we’d gotten from another guide at another lodge. He talked about red giants becoming supernovae, and showed us a red giant, Antares. He pointed out dust clouds that obscured part of the Milky Way, including the biggest dust cloud, the Coal Sack. We already knew Festus was expert on the local animals, birds, insects and plants, geology, anthropology and centuries of history. Now astronomy too?!

Throughout our stay in Africa I’ve encountered evidence of the wrongness of Western prejudices about indigenous peoples being less sophisticated than Westerners. Festus is a prime example, he’s from the Herrrera tribe and grew up in a simple village, but he is as intelligent, well educated and thoughtful as anyone I’ve met. He seems like a kind and good soul as well. All the guides we’ve had are encyclopedias of knowledge of natural history, with a love of nature and their home country and eager to share that love with tourists. But Festus stands out among even that group for his dedication. I asked him what he does for fun, when he’s not working. He spends time with family, visits a park favored by Africans, watches nature documentaries – he’s particularly fond of Attenborough – and reads natural history. So he’s working even when he’s not. At work, when he’s not shepherding tourists, he trains other guides. The rest of the staff of the camp seem to hold him in high esteem, and after spending only three days with him, Julie and I do too.

One of the waitresses, named Thensia, speaks a click language. She shared a few words with me, it was beautiful and unintelligible. Julie and I asked the staff to take our photo, and several of the younger staffed in jumped in and wanted to take photos with Julie and each other, so we did that a few minutes and everyone had fun. One of the young men planted a kiss on the cheek of one of the waitresses just as I clicked the shutter and everyone laughed. Young Black Africans seem to enjoy photos, we encountered the same thing in the school we visited. Both the children and the staff at the camp crowded around the phone to see the photos when they were done.

Thensia asked me if I had WhatsApp and I said I do, but I hardly ever use it. She watched over my shoulder as I poked around in the app looking for a way to send a message to a new phone number but could not find a way. She told me I had to add the number to my contacts first, and with my permission she snatched the phone from my hand and quickly added herself to my address book. And I sent her the photos.

My point is that she was quite adept with the iPhone; her fingertips flew over the keyboard and icons. Hardly an innocent savage!

And now I have the phone number of a pretty 20-year-old waitress in my contacts list. What could go wrong with that?

[Note from 2020: I just checked my phone. I still have her number!]

(click the images for a bigger view)


Me, Julie and Festus have lunch.


A lion feasting on a zebra.


Lion walking away after feeding on a zebra. Note the bloody jaws and chest.

Part of me thought the last two photos were too graphic to post, but mainly I think they’re just nature.

📓🌍

What happened to Brexit?

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night unable to sleep – which I’m doing now at least two or three times a week, it’s just normal now – and I thought did Brexit happen?

I remember it was a really big deal for a couple of years, and then it was imminent and then it was going to be days away and then … nothing. Did it happen? Has great Britain left Europe? Is Great Britain literally drifting around the Atlantic Ocean now, unmoored?

Also, what happened to the murder hornets?

African safari journal – one year ago – never get tired of the elephants

June 19, 2019 — We got our cold weather yesterday, up at 5 am for the morning game drive. Camp Kipwe wasn’t cold. I’d assumed it might be at night, knowing the wide temperature fluctuations you get in the desert and judging by the heavy blankets the resort laid on the bed. But it remained warm all night and it felt like the mid-60s at breakfast and when we set out on the drive. But it quickly got colder as we went across the desert – into a different micro-climate? – and the wind whipped through the open safari truck. We drove for more than an hour down relatively smooth dirt roads, rough dirt roads, and rutted desert landscape – more African massage – until we found a dozen elephants.

Even though we’ve seen literally more than a hundred elephants so far, this was worth it. These were desert adapted elephants, of which only about 600 remain here, with longer legs and broader feet. We got pretty close, a dozen or so yards, and saw a mother with her baby, including breastfeeding, and two immature males play fighting, locking tusks and tossing their heads around.

On the way back we stopped for coffee in the middle of a flat sandy desert plain, nearly devoid of visible life other than ourselves, with irregular notched mountains in the distance. The temperature got up to the 80s or 90s by then.

We were really surprised by this heat. We were expecting more of the same, even colder, temps in the 30s or 40s first thing in the morning, and 70ish in the hottest part of the day. Instead, it’s hot and the sun is bright, the kind of weather that makes you want to stay inside in the a/c bxack home. Fortunately we’re prepared, with clothes for any temperature from 40 degrees to 100 degrees. (After that, clothing won’t help you.)

I wonder what the temperature is at home. No internet means no way to find out.

At lunch, we decided to skip the afternoon activity and just take the rest of the day as a down day. This was a comfortable spot for it. We’d once again been upgraded to a suite, with comfortable chairs. We had a good nap – those 5 and 6 am wake up calls add up, combined with long, leisurely dinners that start at 7 pm. After nap, I had a shower, which was lovely, as our African schedule has allowed me only three or four of those per week.

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We woke up this morning for breakfast at Okonjima Lunxury Bush Camp and were driven to Okonjima Airstrip by Gabriel, the manager of the resort, a South African with a nicer four-wheel drive vehicle than the others we’ve ridden in. He told us that he ran the place with his wife Sarah, a Canadian, who we’d met previously. The staff is, as Julie surmised, all men. He said that started by coincidence, but they kept hiring men and turning away women because that meant they did not need separate housing. Also, no maternity leave, ha ha. Other than institutional sexism, Gabriel was a pleasant fellow, and told us about difficulties running a resort in Namibia. Hard to find supplies, businesses close at lunch, no Internet access, to name three.

We took another small plane, big enough for eight passengers but with the seats taken out and only me and Julie riding. We encountered moderate turbulence over the mountains. I’m doing much better with that; I still don’t like it but my brain continues to function. I keep my eyes open and concentrate on looking at the horizon; I think I read that somewhere. Also, while there are no handgrips in the plane, I gripped the bottom of the seat with one hand, which was helpful. No big deal. We landed at Twyfelfontein Airstrip after 50 minutes, a smooth landing. Our pilot, Nick, bid us farewell.

As was the case at most of our other stops, our guide greeted us at the airstrip. As with most of our other stops, he will be our guide for the duration of our stay. His name was Festus, and over the course of our first few hours together, he revealed an encyclopedic knowledge of natural history, including botany, zoology, geology and anthropology – I was interested to learn from Festus that there had been a recent discovery of a new human ancestor, Homo Namibius, placed between Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus, at about 3.5 million years before present, if Festus recalled correctly. He knows African and Namibian history, and he served us a tasty lunch of beef schnitzel, green salad with feta cheese, and fresh fruit, along with fresh water, with soft drinks available but not requested. The schnitzel, along with apple strudel at dinner, is a byproduct of Namibian’s colonial history, it was a colony of Germany.

Twyfelfontein proved to be another hotbox, and Festus drove us through the desert for two hours in heat I estimate at 90 or even 100 degrees, and me wearing hiking boots and medium-weight cargo pants. The desert is even more austere and beautiful than Okonjima, all khaki and a few hardy plants and animals, with flat plains stretching off to abrupt mountains.

And now we are at Hoanib Valley Camp in Kaokoveld, which is in the middle of the desert, surrounded on several sides by khaki mountains and abutting a broad plain of desert life. The camp is about a half-dozen guest tents, with a big common area for meals and relaxing, with coffee, tea, wine and treats on tap. The food and service are impeccable, as at nearly every place we’ve visited on our trip. We have the Honeymoon Tent, with a big broad king-size bed, linen sheets, a small writing table on which I’m writing this journal entry, and a living area with couch, table and chairs, and front deck beyond, with chairs, looking over the desert. Like Camp Xakanaxa, it’s basically a lovely hotel room inside a tent.

The manager, TJ, showed us around the tent, including the shower, which has a steel bucket in one corner. He said he expected we encountered that arrangement before, but we had not. He explained that the bucket is a water conservation measure. When the shower starts and runs cold, you run it into the bucket. When you add hot water and have the temperature the way you like it, you push the bucket aside and shower normally. The maids come in and use the water from the bucket to clean the floors.

Hoanib Valley Camp has WiFi, and the electricity runs 24x7. The WiIf is slow but functions. I’ve got my iPad plugged in and am uploading photos to the cloud.

(Click the photos for a bigger view)


View from our tent at Hoanib Valley Lodge.


Our shower at Hoanib Valley Lodge. The bucket is for water conservation.


Nice bathroom at Hoanib Valley Lodge.


Our tent at Hoanib Valley Lodge.


These little birds hopped up on the table and begged for treats at Camp Kipwe. The waiter scolded Julie for feeding them. The staff’s attitude at Camp Kipwe contributed to this being not our favorite place in Africa, despite the camp itself being lovely.


Panoramic photo of the desert. That’s Julie next to the truck.

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‪Remarkable time-lapse video of a toucan growing up from hatching to adulthood. ‬‪Seems like an intelligent, playful animal that recognizes its person. ‬ ∫youtu.be/nfK6k8nCW…‬

“ ... trying to shame people into wearing condoms didn’t work—and it won’t work for masks either.”

Shaming didn’t work to get men to wear condoms during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, but making condom-wearing convenient and less unpleasant was effective. The same lessons need to be applied to mask-wearing today.

Julia Marcus at The Atlantic:

Public-health professionals have learned this lesson before. In 1987, Congress banned the use of federal funds for HIV-prevention campaigns that might “promote or encourage, directly or indirectly, homosexual activities.” As a result, public-health campaigns avoided sex-positive imagery and messaging, and instead associated condom use with virtue and condomless sex with irresponsibility, disease, and death. According to one particularly foreboding poster, which featured an image of a gravestone: “A bad reputation isn’t all you can get from sleeping around.” But those moralistic, fear-mongering health messages often fell flat. Other HIV-prevention campaigns began to adopt a harm-reduction approach, which empathizes with people’s basic human needs and offers them strategies to limit potential dangers. For some men, condoms got in the way of what they valued most about sex: pleasure and intimacy. Not surprisingly, HIV-prevention campaigns that put pleasure and intimacy at the center of their safer-sex messaging tended to work.

When the public-health community talks about harm reduction, we often talk of “meeting people where they are.” A fundamental part of that is, well, literally meeting people where they are. Just like the buckets of free condoms stationed in gay bars, masks need to be dispensed where they’re needed most: at the front of every bus and the entrance to every airport, grocery store, and workplace. Masks should become ubiquitous, but distribution should begin in areas where the coronavirus has hit hardest, including black and Latino neighborhoods. (That black men who wear masks may be at heightened risk of violence is one more grim illustration of why combatting racism is inextricable from public health.) What matters most is that people choose to wear a mask when they are indoors or in close proximity to others—and that choice needs to be rendered as effortless as possible.

The Dudes Who Won’t Wear Masks

The White House is taking increasing measures to protect Trump from covid, even as he insists publicly the disease is no big deal

As he seeks to insert rival Joe Biden’s health into the presidential campaign, Trump has voiced escalating concern about how it would appear if he contracted coronavirus and has insisted on steps to protect himself, even as he refuses to wear a mask in public and agitates for large campaign rallies where the virus could spread.

When he travels to locations where the virus is surging, every venue the President enters is inspected for potential areas of contagion by advance security and medical teams, according to people familiar with the arrangements. Bathrooms designated for the President’s use are scrubbed and sanitized before he arrives. Staff maintain a close accounting of who will come into contact with the President to ensure they receive tests.

Measures to protect Trump from coronavirus scale up even as he seeks to move on

Not the first time Sammy got to the glass of water I put out for myself.

In the middle of the worst pandemic in a century, Trump wants to eliminate medical insurance for 20 million Americans. Even for Trump, this is depraved and evil.

Paradise, California, suffered extensive damage and deaths in 2018 forest fires, and is now grappling with the pandemic and recession. The high school graduating faces uncertainty with hope for the future

Justine Calma at The Verge:

For the second year in a row, graduation at Paradise High School became a tribute to triumph over disaster. The tight-knit small town — where many seniors have taken classes together since kindergarten — was almost entirely razed by the Camp Fire in 2018. It was the deadliest and most destructive blaze in California’s history. Then, COVID-19 upended the school year, and seniors once again graduated into a world that looked very different than it did when the year began.

For the class of 2020, even the near future is a question mark. The pandemic has already taken over 100,000 lives in the US and no one can predict when it — or the economic collapse in its wake — will end. Temperatures are soaring to record highs, an ominous sign for the coming fire season. Persevering through compounded crises is the new rite of passage for graduates across the US. The town of Paradise, California just happened to have an early baptism by fire….

In some ways, Paradise is a glimpse into what might be a new normal for many of us: a cycle of upheaval, followed by adrenaline-fueled hope, exhaustion, and, ultimately, adaptation….

Eighty-five people died in the Camp Fire, sparked by deteriorating PG&E power lines; 18,804 homes and buildings burned. Roughly nine of every ten Paradise High students lost their homes; [Class valedictorian Katie-Lynn] Chandler was among those whose homes burned. The care facility where her mother worked was also destroyed. She and her mother rent a room in a house from the person who owned the place where Chandler’s mother had worked.

Surviving paradise: Through fire and fear, Paradise, California’s teens take control of their lives